Australia To Boost Joint Strike Fighter Order To 72 Aircraft: A Brief History Of The Troubled F-35 Program

According to several reports, Prime Minister Tony Abbott will today formally announce that Australia will buy 58 more F-35 Joint Strike fighters — bringing the planned F-35 fleet to 72 aircraft in total. The first Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is slated for delivery in 2018 ahead of RAAF operation in 2020. But as technically advanced as the stealthy 5th-gen F-35 is, the program has also had its fair share of ups and downs. Let’s take a brief look...

Australia’s new $12 billion order will reportedly become the country’s most expensive defence asset; one designed to eventually replace RAAF'S F-18 Super Hornets. [ABC News Australia]

A United States Government report reveals that the F-35 will be delayed yet again. This time, the problem is stalled software development. It’s just the latest in a long line of delays and problems. Australia’s F-35 order, for at least 14 jets, is looking more and more like throwing money into the wind.

Over here at Gizmodo Australia, we’re all lucky enough to be living out our dream jobs. Everyday we’re testing new gadgets, new tech and previewing the next big thing. My job, however, is nothing compared to the job of Elliot Clements. His colleagues call him “Hemo”, not because it’s a clever nickname from some obscure experience, but because that was his callsign for the 14 years he was in the Navy, flying combat missions in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Hemo is a fighter jet test pilot on the trillion-dollar F-35 fighter jet program, and he really does have the best job in the world.

Even if they are primarily just cheap knockoffs, China’s rapidly growing fleet of next-gen aircraft are poised to seriously challenge American air superiority in the coming years. To prevent that, argues Chief of US Air Force Air Command Command Gen. Michael Hostage, the US will need plenty of fifth-generation fighters of its own — no matter the cost.

Mozaffar Khazaee, a former defence contractor has been arrested by authorities on charges that he attempted to smuggle classified technical data on a variety of military projects — including the new F-35 Lightning II — out of the US and into Iran.

Monster Machines: The Next F-35 Lightning's Engine Adapts For Flight, Fight And Beyond

Unlike commercial airliners, modern military aircraft are subjected to ever-changing flying conditions — from high-thrust takeoffs to flying at altitude to combat manoeuvres. So why are they outfitted with engines that perform optimally in only one of those flight envelopes? For the next iteration of the F-35 Lightning II, Pratt and Whitney is developing an engine that performs at its best no matter what’s required of it.

It’s not news that the Pentagon’s fated F-35 program is riddled with dilemmas. For more than a decade, it’s bumped into roadblock after roadblock. When the planes aren’t grounded, they’re forbidden to fly in bad weather, combat missions or at night. Vanity Fair just published a lengthy look at just how bad a mess it is.

Finding a suitable runway to launch your multibillion dollar fighter jet from isn’t always as easy as it sounds. That’s why the F-35B Lightning II is designed to with the ability to both take off and land without ever needing to taxi. Here’s the first look at its vertical launch.

In what is becoming almost as consistent as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, the F-35 — America’s trillion dollar joke of a fighter jet — has been grounded again. I don’t even know how many times the fighter jet has been grounded now, I’ve lost count. This time, it’s because of a crack in a turbine blade of the engine.

Some of the her pilots claim that the F-35 Lightning II is so easy to fly that it feels “like magic”. Reading their words, I thought they were talking about video game instead of one of the most advanced war machines ever created.

It seemed like a promising step for America’s next stealth fighter: The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter passed a key Pentagon test of its combat capability. But it turns out that the family of jets cleared the mid-February exam only because its proctor agreed to inflate its grade. In essence, the military helped the F-35 cheat on its midterms.

The F-35 may be a lot of dubious things (overpriced, underused, occasionally broken) — but it sure is beautiful. Enjoy the eye candy American tax dollars bought in all its splendour — the F-35 just took its first flight into darkness.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, meant to replace nearly every tactical warplane in the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, was already expected to cost $US1 trillion dollars for development, production and maintenance over the next 50 years. Now that cost is expected to grow, owing to 13 different design flaws uncovered in the last two months by a hush-hush panel of five Pentagon experts. It could cost up to a billion dollars to fix the flaws on copies of the jet already in production, to say nothing of those yet to come

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